by Anne Mather
‘And why not?’
‘Why not? Because I want more than one night with you—because what we have between us will not burn itself out in just a few short hours.’
‘It—it won’t?’
The trembling was getting worse now. From feeling that he had walked out on her for good, she had veered to the belief that he didn’t want her anywhere near him and from there to thinking that he wanted her out. Now he was saying that he still wanted her—and wanted her far more, for far longer than she had ever dreamed.
‘Oh, Jessica …’
Angelos’s tone was almost gentle in its mockery and he took a step forward, closer to her. Lifting a hand, he let the backs of his fingers trail down the side of her face, from her temple, over her cheekbone to the fine line of her jaw and then along to trace the shape of her quivering mouth. And she saw how his eyes darkened and deepened as he watched her shiver of response.
‘Do you doubt it? Can you find any reason why it would not be true?’
And of course she couldn’t. Looking into his face, into his eyes, as she was, she could see nothing but sincerity and total conviction in what he was saying. She didn’t know just what it meant, only that for now, for today, he meant exactly what he was saying.
But she couldn’t find any words to answer him. All she could do was shake her head in stunned silence, her tongue seeming frozen inside her mouth.
It seemed that that was enough. A small smile crossed Angelos’s sensual mouth, brief, fleeting. If she had blinked she would have missed it. But she saw it and the way that her senses reacted to that faint warmth in his face, every nerve twisting in instant response, her heart kicking under her ribs and her pulse picking up a beat or two, told her just how much it meant.
And that warned her how deep she was in.
So deep that the waters of sensuality were almost closing over her head, cutting her off from the world she knew and all sense of reality that she understood.
For now, for this moment, there was only Angelos and the spell he was weaving around her.
And Angelos wanted her. He wanted her for more than one night.
What we have between us will not burn itself out in just a few short hours …
A small spark of hope lit in her bruised heart, warming and easing the pain that had torn at it so much in the past few days.
‘Angelos …’ she began, her voice trembling.
But he brushed aside her stumbling beginning with an arrogant flick of his hand and suddenly moved away again, crossing to sit astride the broad leather covered arm of a nearby chair, one foot on the buttoned seat, the other on the floor, his arms crossed over his broad chest.
‘So now perhaps we had better talk about that job I’m offering.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
THAT job?
So now perhaps we had better talk about that job I’m offering.
The words swung round in Jessica’s head, making her feel as if the world was spinning round her so violently that she had to grab at the back of the chesterfield for support. If he had slapped her hard in the face, she doubted that it could have had much more effect than his sudden withdrawal and the coolly careless words he had just tossed at her.
Was she hearing right?
And which part of what she had heard was the right one?
Had she been imagining the darkly sensual, ‘what we have between us will not burn itself out in just a few short hours’? Or was the brusque, businesslike declaration that they had better talk about a job the reality and the other Angelos just a figment of her imagination?
She didn’t know and couldn’t begin to guess. And the expression on the face of the Angelos who sat just a short distance away from her, proud dark head slightly angled to one side, deep-set eyes watching her closely, was totally enigmatic, giving nothing away.
‘You’re offering me a job?’
‘I already did—remember. Yesterday, before you set out to meet your fiancé.’
Oh, she remembered all right. She remembered him saying something about offering her a job and then adding that he didn’t want her to go. But then he had moved closer. He had told her that he was definitely not playing this time—and then he had kissed her. And, from that moment on nothing else had registered in her mind. Only feelings—feelings of hunger and desire—an overwhelming need for this man in a way that she had never, ever experienced in her life before.
A desire that in the shifting fortunes, the total upheaval of the past couple of days, was the one and only constant in her life. It was the only thing that had remained consistent when her inheritance, her belief in the sort of man she had thought Marty to be, and finally her own trust in the man she had thought she was going to marry had been totally shattered until her existence was completely unrecognisable as the life it had once been.
‘We didn’t exactly discuss any details,’ she managed warily. ‘So what is it that you have in mind?’
‘I thought I could offer you a job on the estate.’
Angelos pushed himself up from his seat and stretched lazily, the movement flexing his broad shoulders, drawing the crumpled white shirt tight against the hard contours of his chest. The fine material was tugged loose at his narrow waist and, as his arms lifted, she caught a tantalising glimpse of toned olive skin, lightly hazed with black body hair. Her mouth dried in response to the memory of the way it had felt to have the warmth of that skin, the faint rasp of the crisp hairs against her own flesh as she had writhed underneath him in the grip of the mind-blowing ecstasy of her orgasm.
She was grateful for the way that he turned his back on her, strolling away to the wide bay window to stare out at the wind tossed trees edging the huge green lawn. At least this way she didn’t have to worry about the wave of hot colour that she could feel flooding her cheeks at her memories. She had little doubt that his astute mind would put two and two together and come up with the reason why she was reacting in that way.
‘I understand that you’ve become quite knowledgeable about the place.’
‘Marty was teaching me …’
Was there anything he didn’t know? She couldn’t take her eyes from the tall, powerful figure by the window, hands pushed deep into his trouser pockets, his dark head lifted as he studied the glorious view. His long legs were slightly apart, feet planted firmly on the worn, polished boards of the library floor. She’d seen him like that before, she recalled, on the first day when he’d arrived back here, the day of Marty’s funeral. She’d watched him as he’d stood in much the same position but in the other room and she’d thought then that he’d looked like the lord of all he surveyed.
If only she’d known. If only there had been some sort of warning that the thoughts her imagination had come up with were in fact the truth. If only Marty had given her some sort of hint as to what was happening so that she might have been better prepared. She might at least have had a chance of looking for some sort of employment to provide for herself in the future, so that she wouldn’t have been left floundering and at the mercy of whatever Angelos had planned for her.
‘And did you enjoy that?’
‘Oh, yes—I was finding it fascinating. We had great plans for the North Copse and for the farms over by Felpersham. We wanted to modernise their …’
Her voice failed her as she watched him nod slowly, his dark gaze still fixed on the distant horizon. A tiny spark of hope flared in her heart, making her snatch in her breath on a sharp gasp.
Was it possible? Was she dreaming or was Angelos actually being kind? Could he really be planning to offer her some position helping to manage Manorfield in the way that Marty had once dreamed that she would? Was it possible that she could still stay on in some capacity on the estate that she loved? And maybe even work with him at the same time?
Her mind spun at the thought but if she had been challenged she wouldn’t have been able to say if it was the hope of staying on at Manorfield or the thought of working with Angelos that had the strongest effect
on her. She only knew that her heart seemed to be racing high up in her throat, making it difficult to breathe through the tension in her chest and her lungs.
‘I have plans for the Felpersham farms too.’
Now she really was struggling for control. If only he would turn around so that she could see his face, read something from his expression, the look in his eyes. After a couple of days of being on a wild and crazy emotional roller coaster, rushing upwards in hope one moment, only to plunge desperately downwards the next, she had lost all sense of being able to judge what was coming and so anticipate how to react or nerve herself for bitter disappointment. And she could read nothing at all from the long, straight line of his back, the arrogantly held dark head.
‘You do? Great. Is that—what plans?’
‘But they won’t concern you.’
Angelos swung round as he spoke and, from longing to see his face, she now could only wish he had kept his head averted.
Because she read her fate in his eyes, in the grim set of his mouth. The icy blaze of his glare seared over her, seeming to take with it several much needed protective layers of skin and she shivered as she felt a freezing hand of fear reach out and twist in her heart. Suddenly she knew without hope of redemption that any dream of Angelos planning to be kind was just that—a dream—a delusion—an impossibility.
There was no trace of kindness in that face. No touch of it warmed the bleak jet eyes. Whatever he had planned for her, it was not the misty edged future that she had foolishly let herself imagine for a moment.
How could she have ever let herself dream like that? This was Angelos—the Black Angel—she knew what he was like. She should have been forewarned and so forearmed.
‘No?’ she managed, imposing a ruthless control to keep her voice as firm as she possibly could.
‘No.’ Angelos shook his head, shrugging away the question with supreme indifference. ‘Things like that do not concern the stable hands. It is none of their business.’
Stable hands.
Twice Jessica opened her mouth to say something and both times her voice failed her.
Stable hands.
She should have known what was happening; she should have seen it coming. She knew what Angelos was like, and she knew why he was here. He had come to take over Manorfield because, by doing so, he would have the last laugh. He would have his revenge on her for the appalling events of his last stay here and the fact that she had had him thrown out of his job because of the way she had reacted in fear and panic. But, just for a few foolish minutes, she had been weak enough to wonder. She’d actually let her thoughts wander into dreamland. Because Angelos had told her that he wanted her so much she had allowed herself to imagine that that meant more than it did.
But all he had said was that he wanted her. And that was all he had meant. It didn’t mean that he cared in any other way or that he was going to really help her. It didn’t mean that he had forgotten or forgiven the things that had happened between them in the past.
Quite the opposite. Finding that she was at his mercy, with no one to help her and nowhere else to go, it seemed he had seen the perfect opportunity to add an extra twist to the knife and make his revenge even more exquisite.
‘What has this got to do with the job that you’re offering me?’
Angelos’s smile was slow and cruel, the gleam in his eyes brightening in a way that made her stomach lurch sickeningly. Never before had she felt so much like a small, quivering mouse caught on the end of a cat’s cruel claws.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘Not to me,’ Jessica flung at him and saw the swift, dark frown that drew his black brows sharply together.
It was a small triumph but a very necessary one. If he meant what she believed was in his mind then she was going to make him say it. He was going to have to come right out and state exactly what he had planned; she wasn’t going to make things easy for him by putting words into his mouth. When her outraged common sense screamed at her that she was still being foolish enough to cling desperately to a hope that he didn’t mean what she thought he had, she pushed it away as strongly as she could.
She didn’t need that sort of foolishness undermining her determination to handle this situation with as much dignity and control as possible.
‘Perhaps you’d care to explain.’
That actually earned her a microscopic glimmer of a smile, one that quirked up the corners of his mouth for a second and was gone. And it was only when it disappeared and she felt the sudden rush of cold that followed that Jessica realised how the tiny response had warmed the atmosphere, easing it subtly.
‘Always the lady of the manor,’ Angelos drawled, strolling over to the table where the drinks from the night of the funeral still stood. Unscrewing a bottle of mineral water, he poured himself a glassful, concentrating wholly on the action and not sparing her a single glance or, apparently, a hint of a thought.
In another man she might have thought that he was reviewing what he planned to say, organising his thoughts and rehearsing the words, but she knew that that was not at all likely where Angelos was concerned. He already knew exactly what he was going to say and he would have planned it all already, aiming for exactly the result he wanted. The studied pause was just for another effect, dragging it deliberately to keep her waiting and on edge.
‘I offered you a job …’
Drink poured, he lifted it from the tray and took a slow, considering swallow. And, as he did so, his eyes locked with hers across the top of the glass, holding her transfixed with a force so strong that she felt her mouth drying in the impact of it and her throat seemed to have become paralysed, unable to swallow to ease the discomfort of it.
Knowing—or rather suspecting that she knew what he was going to say—didn’t ease the sense of apprehension because of it, she discovered.
‘And I’ll keep my word. But I’m not sure you’ll like what’s on offer. You see, I’m afraid that there is only one position free on the estate at the moment.’
I’m afraid—piffle! Jessica retorted in the privacy of her thoughts. If he’d said he was sorry, it couldn’t have been any more hypocritical or cynical. And they both knew it. They were just playing a mind game where neither of them was actually prepared to admit it.
‘And that is?’
‘The only thing I need is a groom—a stable hand, to be precise. That is the only job I have a vacancy for.’
She had known it. From the moment he’d mentioned that word, she’d known just where his mind was going. He wanted his revenge on her and he had seen the way to make it perfect by turning the tables exactly, putting them both into the opposite positions in which they had been years before. Then she had been, as he had always accused her of being, something close to the lady of the manor. The adored, pampered—possibly, yes, she was prepared to admit it—probably the spoilt stepdaughter to Marty, who had so wanted children of his own. And he had been the hired help, the casual labourer, employed to work in the stables, mucking out the stalls, grooming her horse and having him saddled and ready for her when she had wanted to go out riding.
Now he was the man in charge and what he planned was that she …
The thought died, her mind blowing a fuse as she realised another point, another twist of the screw that tightened the painful trap she was in, moving her distress up another notch—a deliberate, calculated notch, she was sure. Angelos must know just how she would feel when she realised this—and it would have added to the effect he was aiming for.
Charlie. Her beautiful Charlie. The wonderful purebred Arab stallion that Marty had bought for her twenty-first birthday. The horse she totally adored. She normally spent every moment she could with him, grooming him or exercising him, showing him …
But the sale had been completed in Marty’s name. Charlie’s documents still listed him as the property of the Manorfield estate and no transfer had ever been made—no transfer had ever needed to be made, at least that was what she and her
stepfather had assumed.
So that now, in the eyes of the law, her beloved stallion was legally the property of whoever owned the Manorfield estate. In other words, Charlie belonged to Angelos, to the bloody Black Angel. She suspected that Angelos had been well aware of this fact and had used it to tighten the knot in the ropes in which he had her trussed up cruelly, adding to her distress at the way that he had taken every last thing that she loved and valued from her.
The cold-hearted, calculating, conniving …
‘You bastard!’
To her astonishment, Angelos’s response was another smile. Wider this time and more definite, but no warmer than the earlier one. If anything, it was colder, harder, definitely without a trace of amusement in it.
‘If you want to insult me, Princess, at least use some term that I might actually find offensive. I am a bastard, I know that. I’ve known it since before I was old enough to walk. Certainly before I was old enough to understand just what the word meant and to wonder about the other bastard in my life—the father who seduced my mother, left her pregnant and then went back home to marry the woman he was engaged to.’
Jessica hadn’t known that. The thought that they had something in common caught her up short for a moment but, seeing the look on her face, Angelos shook his head reprovingly.
‘Don’t try it, Princess—don’t go claiming that you feel sorry for me in the hope of getting me to be a little more generous. It won’t work.’
‘I wasn’t going to try any such thing,’ Jessica flung at him. ‘I should have known this would happen—that you wouldn’t really have a job to offer. At least not one that I could seriously consider taking. I wouldn’t touch this one with a forty foot bargepole.’
‘You wouldn’t?’ Angelos’s carved mouth twisted cynically as he nodded. ‘I rather suspected that that might be your answer. So it’s just as well I have a second idea for you.’